ssh-chat – Make Group/Private Chat with Other Linux Users Over SSH

ssh-chat is a cross-platform command line utility written in GoLang, which enables you to chat securely with a relatively small number of users over an ssh connection. It is specially designed to convert your SSH server into chat service. Once you launch it, you’ll get a chat prompt rather than a usual shell.

Now your team members can connect to it using the ssh command, and start chatting in a straightforward chat room via a secure shell connection.

To demonstrate how it all works, we will use a ssh-chat server with IP: 192.168.56.10 and three users (root, tecmint and aaronkilik) connected over ssh to this the server as shown below.

Important: You’ll notice that all the three users are not entering any passwords while connecting to the server, this is because we have setup passwordless login for ssh connections. This is the recommended method of authentication for ssh connections in Linux.

Aaron Kili is a Linux and F.O.S.S enthusiast, an upcoming Linux SysAdmin, web developer, and currently a content creator for TecMint who loves working with computers and strongly believes in sharing knowledge.

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7 Responses

You don’t need to host a gateway for people to access ssh-chat. That is, you don’t need to ssh into one server, only to ssh into ssh-chat after that. You can just ssh into the ssh-chat server directly if the port is exposed. In fact, removing the need for a gateway to have ssh-secured chat is the entire point of ssh-chat.

Thanks a lot for writing back: giving us some useful information. We only run ssh into the server because we got errors while trying to connect to ssh-chat server directly. But we’ll test once more and possibly update the article as you have explained. Once more thanks for this useful server, and these remarks.